The Commission ended its work in 1911, concluding that immigration from southern and eastern Europe posed a serious threat to American society and culture and should be greatly reduced in the future. The Commission proposed the enactment of a "reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration" [2]

The Commission's overall findings provided the rationale for sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe by restricting the annual number of immigrants from any given country to 3 percent of the total number of people from that country living in the United States in 1910. The movement for immigration restriction that the Dillingham Commission helped to stimulate culminated in the National Origins Formula, part of the Immigration Act of 1924, which capped national immigration at 150,000 annually and completely barred immigration from Asia.[3]

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission issued a 41-volume report containing statistical overviews and other analyses of topics related to immigrant occupations, living conditions, education, legislation (at the state as well as the federal level), and social and cultural organizations. A planned 42nd volume, an index of the other 41 volumes, was never issued.[4]

Volumes 1-2: Abstracts of Reports of The Immigration Commission, with Conclusions and Recommendations and Views of the Minority.